Chaucer's Shipman's Tale, Boccaccio, and the "Civilizing" of Fabliau

Judged by its story—a monk borrows money from a merchant, buys the wife's favours with it and then refers the merchant to his wife for repayment—this Tale is a fabliau, ¹ which plays variations on the motifs of illicit sex, tricky intrigue and "poetic justice." Yet these elements are handled with a blandness, an absence of dramatic action and characterization, which distinguish it sharply from the other fabliaux. No vivid lust, discord of characters or extra-textual revenge animate this story. As Helen Cooper has noted, "Half the fun of the other fabliaux lies in their conscious breaking of moral and social norms; here, that the wife sells her favours and the monk cheats her of the price passes without causing a ripple on the surface. Of all the fabliaux in the Canterbury Tales, this is the only one to be totally amoral, for the contrasting moral context has disappeared." ² Though a fabliau in its subject matter—illicit sex, intrigue and cuckoldry—it is a tale in which these elements are not the focal points of humour and the ridicule of exposure as in most examples of the genre. In particular, it is a tale in which the nominal victim, the Merchant, is almost sympathetically rendered, his deceivers appear less than admirable but are equally not made positively unlikeable, no one is punished or exposed, and any "moral" has to be supplied entirely by the interpreter. In fact, in its obliqueness and its style of presentation it is quite unlike any other fabliau, by Chaucer or any one else. As a tale, its "meaning" lies not in its fulfillment of the norms of the genre but in its displacement of these by focus on the verbal exchanges between the characters and the rich ambivalence of their language. Criticism which approaches it as a dramatic story, in which character related to moral parameters is the meaning, oversimplifies and confesses disappointment, ³ even more than most approaches to Chaucer as a kind of early dramatic-realist novelist.

In both the probable sources for the Shipman's Tale, Boccaccio's Decameron, VIII, 1 and 2, ⁴ the events of the narrative broadly fulfill the fabliau's traditional contract with the reader: that is, the reader is provided with sexual titillation through illicit sexual activity, intellectual and comic stimulation through the ingenious trickery which enables the sex, and moral satisfaction in the punishment of the rapacious female through the biter-bit structure of the plot. What is unusual in fabliau, however, is that in Boccaccio the adulterous female is punished, rather than escaping with no more than exposure, like Chaucer's Alison and May, and the male adulterer triumphs and suffers no penalty. The woman, that is, is had twice. Both Boccaccio stories are of the "lover's gift regained" type: in the first, a German soldier falls in love with a wealthy merchant's wife, who promises to return his love for two hundred florins. He is disgusted by her avarice and decides to punish her. Having borrowed money from her husband, he pays her in front of a witness, has sex with her and, later, tells the merchant that he has returned his borrowings to the wife who, because of the witness, cannot deny this and, thus, has to return the money to her husband. In the second story, a priest, lusting after a local wife, cannot put up the money demanded by the wife for her favours, but leaves his "fine blue cloak" as surety. Afterwards, still unable to raise the money, he sends back to the wife a mortar he had earlier borrowed, with a request for the cloak "left as surety," knowing that the message will be delivered in the husband's presence. The husband, outraged that his wife should demand "surety," forces her to return the cloak. The first story is closer in social level and the basic...